In all the flap about Obama's reckless comments about Iran, Cuba, and
Venezuela not posing a threat to the U.S. because they're small and spend less
on their military than we do, one statement he made has gone virtually
unnoticed.

Yes, it's important to realize that we have a presidential candidate who actually
believes that the Soviet Union once told the U.S. "We're going to wipe you off
the planet" (they never did).

Is it as important as Gerald Ford's gaffe when he declared that Poland was a
free country -- back when it was under Russian domination? Let's not forget
that Gerald Ford lost that election.

And it's disturbing that he seems not to understand that it's Iran's declared
willingness to unilaterally initiate nuclear war against a civilian population, for
religious reasons, and without regard for retaliation, that makes them a far
greater threat than the Soviet Union's vast nuclear power ever was.

But if Obama gets the whole ignorant-of-history-and-world-affairs vote, he'll
win by a landslide.

No, what troubles me most is what he said right after that, while campaigning
in Oregon: "We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our
homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries
are going to say OK."

"That's not leadership," Obama declared. "That's not going to happen."

What's not going to happen? Us continuing to drive our SUVs and eat as much
as we want and keep our homes at 72 degrees? Or other nations saying OK?

We already know, from Obama's comments at a private meeting with big-pocket donors in San Francisco, that he's an elitist who sneers at the common
people who cling to religion and guns because they're bitter about job losses
twenty years ago.

But what this statement reveals is that Obama's real religion has nothing to do
with Reverend Wright.

Obama is a true believer in the religion of Environmentalism.

Not the science of the environment. Where that science survives, it provides us
with a vital service; and it doesn't take any faith to believe in the findings of
genuine scientists doing science properly.

No, I'm speaking of the religion. It's not an organized religion (though the U.N.
did organize the great testament of faith in the utterly unproven doctrine of
human-caused global warming), but neither was the English Puritanism that it
so strongly resembles.

But don't take it from me. Take it from Freeman Dyson.

For those who don't know his work, Dyson is a scientist and a great imaginer of
possibilities. Half the science fiction of the past thirty years has been based on
ideas that Dyson sprays out casually; but the man doesn't believe his own
speculations, he remembers clearly the difference between solid science and
"cool idea" conversations.

That's what puritan environmentalists have forgotten.

I've actually met Freeman Dyson, at a conference on science, religion, and
science fiction held by the Templeton Foundation in London a few years ago.

There were some extremely bright scientists there. I'm not saying that
Freeman Dyson was the smartest person in the room. I'm just saying that as
long as he was there, I was definitely not the smartest one.

Yet I found him to be a softspoken, genial man who never pontificated, never
even spoke critically of other people's ideas.

So it makes it all the more impressive -- to me at least -- that in a recent
review in the New York Review of Books, he wrote the following paragraphs that
refer specifically to the Religion of Environmentalism:

"All the books that I have seen about the science and economics of global
warming ... miss the main point. The main point is religious rather than
scientific.

"There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism,
holding that we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste
products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is
to live as frugally as possible.

"The ethics of environmentalism are being taught to children in kindergartens,
schools, and colleges all over the world.

"Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion. And
the ethics of environmentalism are fundamentally sound. Scientists and
economists can agree with Buddhist monks and Christian activists that
ruthless destruction of natural habitats is evil and careful preservation of birds
and butterflies is good.

"The worldwide community of environmentalists -- most of whom are not
scientists -- holds the moral high ground, and is guiding human societies
toward a hopeful future. Environmentalism, as a religion of hope and respect
for nature, is here to stay. This is a religion that we can all share, whether or
not we believe that global warming is harmful.

"Unfortunately, some members of the environmental movement have also
adopted as an article of faith the belief that global warming is the greatest
threat to the ecology of our planet. That is one reason why the arguments
about global warming have become bitter and passionate.

"Much of the public has come to believe that anyone who is skeptical about the
dangers of global warming is an enemy of the environment. The skeptics now
have the difficult task of convincing the public that the opposite is true.

"Many of the skeptics are passionate environmentalists. They are horrified to
see the obsession with global warming distracting public attention from what
they see as more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet, including
problems of nuclear weaponry, environmental degradation, and social injustice.

"Whether they turn out to be right or wrong, their arguments on these issues
deserve to be heard." (See http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21494.)

These paragraphs were sent to me by a friend who is seen how much heat I've
taken for calling Environmentalism a religion and for pointing out that the
claims of human-caused global warming are faith-based rather than science-based. He thought -- correctly -- that I would find it vastly reassuring to know
that Freeman Dyson agrees with me.

Right down to the point that I am, in fact, a passionate environmentalist -- but
one who thinks that it's the science, not the religion, that will lead us to
solutions of real problems.

Barack Obama's comments, however, reveal him to be in the religious-faith
category. The Environmental Puritans believe that any opposition to their
dogmas is heresy, and that anything that doesn't match their vision of how
humans should live is a sin.

Since their vision of how humans should live is "without making any difference
in how the world would be without humans," we are all, alas, sinners.
However, some are more sinful than others, and the United States is the most
sinful of all.

No, not China, because the Environmental Puritans, like the rest of the world,
expect America to live by a higher standard than other nations. Fair enough --
we claim to be a special nation, and so we should meet a higher standard.

Still, the Environmental Puritans agree with the ayatollahs on this one point:
America is the Great Satan. And Obama echoes that view when he refers to
our gasoline consumption, our eating, and our air-conditioning and heating as
if they were sins for which we are accountable to the rest of the world.

The conservative ex-Republican in me immediately wants to reply sharply that
what we drive, eat, and air-condition is the business of no other nation, and I
don't want a president who thinks it is.

In fact, though, it is everybody's business how much petroleum we use up,
because we're sucking up a huge portion of the world's supply and when it's all
gone, we will have used far more than our share.

It's the tone of his remark that I find repulsive. Because the "eating" part is
what gives him away.

We have fed the world, through direct sales of our crops, through American-born technologies, and through the Green Revolution in which American
scientists have played a disproportionately strong part.

If we overeat (an arguable concept, by the way; America did not invent obesity,
even if we're unusually good at it) it's because we respond to plenty according
to the biological imperative of the beast. Those who have a genetic disposition
to overeat or to pack on pounds are, in fact, behaving exactly according to our
evolutionary nature. So much for their love of nature -- apparently human
beings are the only animals forbidden to act according to their evolutionary
history.

When Obama says we eat too much -- we, whose surpluses feed so many
nations that when we cut back a little on food production in order to make
ethanol it causes near famine elsewhere -- what is he suggesting?

Is he saying that, as president, he would put us all on a diet?

Is he going to wave his hand and make people whose genes predispose them to
gain weight suddenly have the metabolism of naturally skinny people? Can't
wait for that change!

Or is he simply going to ration food, so we don't eat so much? What, exactly, is
his solution to the problem of environmentally sinful America?

The problem of our vast overuse of and overdependence on oil is a real one --
and a dangerous one. We fund our worst enemies because we need so much
oil; we pollute our environment; and our use of cars kills us at the rate of 835 a
week; and we face a devastating economic crisis if we don't have non-petroleum
energy sources already in place when the oil ends.

The correct solution to the oil problem, according to the Puritans, is to have
fewer humans. Now, I haven't noticed them volunteering to lessen the
population starting with themselves; nor have I seen their heroes bicycling
everywhere (environmental ayatollah Al Gore's plane being a legendary
instance).

But they do systematically resist every solution that doesn't involve wrecking
the American economy and destroying the American way of life.

No insecticides! But also no genetically altered crops with enhanced resistance
to insects and disease!

No coal-fired power plants! But also no clean nuclear plants! (Even though
France has proven that standardized nuclear power is safe and relatively
cheap.)

Yes, you can build windmill farms -- but you can't put them anywhere.

Solar collectors? Excellent -- but don't put them anywhere, either, because
they interfere with the natural ecology -- even in the barest desert. (God forbid
that lizards should have more shade.)

Collect solar power in space and beam it to Earth? Fine -- except that you are
forbidden to actually receive the power anywhere because it's too dangerous.

Hydroelectric power? Great idea -- except that you can't build a dam
anywhere because it transforms a surface environment to an underwater one,
which, naturally, annoys the squirrels. Squirrels, being natural nonsinners,
take precedence over evil, sinful humans, the only animal that is forbidden to
act according to its nature.

Electric cars and public transportation? Great idea -- but not until after we've
converted all power plants to non-carbon-emitting fuels. (Never mind that it
can only ever happen the other way, converting to electric cars immediately, so
they're already in place when the oil runs out or, as I hope, we stop buying it
because we've met the need in other ways.)

It's so Calvinist, so Jonathan Edwards. To the environmentalists, the only
reason we aren't a spider suspended by God's will over the fires of hell is that
spiders are natural and don't deserve to be punished.

We have to do something -- the Environmentalists are right about that. But
they are so puritan that there isn't actually anything that you are allowed to do
because all the solutions are also sinful.

And if you challenge them on precisely this point, they get a smug, pious
expression on their faces and chant their mantras: "sustainable," "renewable."
It's just that anything you try to do that is sustainable and renewable, they'll
hold up in the courts for years.

Until you finally begin to suspect that the goal of the purest of the puritans is
gotterdammerung, apocalypse, the environmental armageddon: The collapse of
the world economic order, the abandonment of advanced technology, and the
death of nine-tenths of the human race.

Only when we are reduced to half a billion people, or less, will we finally have a
chance of being saved -- in the view of the Puritan Environmentalists.

That is the religion whose doctrine Obama is quoting when he says, "We can't
drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72
degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to
say OK."

In point of fact, I don't think Obama really understands the implications of his
statement -- any more than he understood what he was saying when he said
he'd sit down and talk with Iran, Cuba, and other enemies like Hamas and
Hezbollah, or than he knew how clueless he was when he declared that Iran
was less of a threat than the Soviet Union because it was smaller.

Nor are Hillary Clinton and John McCain noticeably smarter in the area of
environmentalism. They have all swallowed the dogmas of this puritan religion
without realizing how little of it is based on science -- and how much of it is
openly contradicted by scientific findings, if they would permit themselves to
examine it.

But only Obama is reciting the mantras. He seems to have internalized these
ideas without ever consulting sources critical of the dogmas. It's hardly a
surprise when your research brings you to certain conclusions -- if you only
study the writings of the true believers.

Isn't that why fanatical Islamists insist that the only good education is to study
the Quran -- and nothing else.

Isn't that why Al Gore invited only true believers in anthropogenic global
warming to testify when he held Senate hearings on the subject?

Obama is not a leader of the Environmental Puritans. He's one of the sheep.

But isn't that even scarier?

Here's the odd thing: George W. Bush, in his personal life, in the home he lives
in when he's not at the White House, is easily the most environmentally
conscious president we've ever had.

But he is excoriated as the personification of environmental evil, because he
thinks that maintaining the economy is also important. Puritans don't have to
think of real-world consequences. They simply demand perfection.

The frightening thing is that Obama might follow their agenda. The result
would be strangulation of the economy without any serious plan for the only
alternatives that are known to work -- nuclear power, hydroelectric power,
windmill farms -- because they are also "sinful."

If I thought he would translate his beliefs into a program to get our petroleum
use down to zero -- a program as intelligently managed and intensive as the
ones that created the interstate freeway system and got us to the moon -- then
I wouldn't be alarmed.

But the true believers don't want technological solutions. They really don't.
They will talk Obama out of any such ideas -- and Obama has shown us that
he listens to them -- uncritically, without understanding the real-world
implications of their dogmas.

The Environmental Puritan movement is anti-American to the core. You can't
follow their advice while being president of the United States -- we don't need
an anti-American president.

Mr. Obama, it's a good thing to have plenty to eat, to have vehicles that do the
work we need them to do, to have homes and workplaces that are cool in
summer and warm in winter. Through all of human history these have been
the goals that all have aspired to, and we have achieved them.

The rest of the world imitates or envies us, because we live, technologically, the
way they would like to live.

Now we're finding out that the means we've used are finite, exhaustible, and
environmentally harmful. It doesn't mean that our achievements are evil. It
only means we have to keep searching for alternative methods of continuing to
achieve them, and making those same benefits available to everyone.

But you don't get to that goal by declaring that other nations have a right to
judge us, and that our achievements are in themselves wrong. If eating,
driving, and heating and cooling our buildings are sins to you, you have
damned the whole human race.

Let me guess, though, where Obama's thermostat is set. You can't run for
president and have people see you sweat.

 Many people have asked OSC where they can get the facts behind the rhetoric about the war. A good starting place is: "Who Is Lying About Iraq?" by Norman Podhoretz, who takes on the "Bush Lied, People Died" slogan.